“Give it back.”
“What bothers me most is that you won’t tell me about it.” Jem held the bowler a little farther out, watching the droves of traffic below. “That you won’t say it out loud. Just tell me. Let’s stay up half the night giggling over his smile or his broad shoulders. Or are you too logical for romance? For love? You think there’s some sort of virtue in keeping a brick wall around your softer emotions. Well, you have them! Even as we keep playing detective and tripping into solutions, you have the same capacity to love and have your heart broken as any other woman.” Jem blew a strand of hair from her face. “Why can’t you just let yourself grab at some happiness?”
“Like your happiness?” Merinda attempted to tug Jem’s arm back. “How happy are you right now? You put all your stock in a fairy tale and hoist up a man to be a prince when he is just a man.”
“It’s better to place someone above yourself than to treat them abysmally,” Jem countered, though her strong tone wobbled somewhat, the fun in her game deflated. Nonetheless, she leaned out the window a little more.
“I treat no one abysmally,” Merinda said, fire in her eyes.
“You hurt Jasper with that interview you gave in the Hog.”
“I didn’t mean to. I believe in what Goldman said. We live in a city that would see immigrants and women silenced forever while the authorities abuse their power to keep the money flowing in. Besides, we were talking about fairy tales and… and… love.”
“Yes.” Jem sliced through Merinda with a look. “We are.”
“You think that because I don’t jump into Jasper Forth’s arms I am cruel. Or that because I don’t moon over Benny’s hair and eyes that I am incapable of loving like you do. Maybe I am capable but choose not to. Can you see me pitching a tent in the Yukon? Or baking cookies with Mrs. Forth for a parlor tea?”
“You would want to bake cookies or follow Benny to the ends of the earth if you truly… if you… ”
“Not all love fits into a little box!” Merinda lunged at Jem and the bowler. Jem stood her ground. “I don’t like being angry at you.” She exhaled.
“And I don’t like being angry at you. But I want you to talk to me. Clearly something is happening between you and Benny. And I worry about your heart, and I worry about Jasper!”
“Don’t you have enough to worry about without adding what you think you see to the list?”
Jem pushed the bowler hat on Merinda’s head.
“Your concern is touching.” Merinda readjusted the hat and picked up her pistol. “Just in case,” she told a wide-eyed Jem.
“I expect you to apologize to Ray, Merinda. He got not a word from you when you nearly broke his nose!”
But Merinda was already out the door.
“Where’s your sidearm?” Merinda asked Benny en route to meeting Ross.
“My what?”
“You’re a Northwest Mounted Police officer. You cannot honestly tell me you don’t carry a weapon.” Merinda’s voice was a frantic gallop. “We’re on our way to a shady lean-to near the docks to learn the peculiarities of explosives and brush shoulders with who knows what kind of vermin and… ”
“I don’t carry a weapon,” Benny said easily, with a shrug.
“Why ever not? All of the dangerous situations you put yourself in… ”
“Samuel Benfield Steele didn’t need a firearm. He merely waltzed into a situation and rectified it with his sterling reputation.”
“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”
“He tamed the Yukon, Merinda, with no weapon other than the threat of his good name.”
“I didn’t grow up with those fairy tales.” She rapped her walking stick on her open palm.
“They’re not fairy tales. He’s a legend.”
Merinda had little time for legends. They could be steps from death, and here was Benfield Citrone without a weapon of any sort.
“How are you supposed to save me if we are accosted by criminals?” she groaned. “We’re meeting dangerous anarchists who have a ton of gunpowder on hand and even more arriving.”
Benny hooted. “I thought you would be the last woman in the world that needed saving!”
Merinda blew out a string of hair from under her tweed cap. “The closer we get to danger, the more we need to ensure we are equipped to turn the tables in our favor!” She reached into her waistband to ensure her pearl-handled pistol was at the ready. “I have a gun.”
“That goes against everything I believe in.” Benny shook his head.
Several moments later, after fruitless attempts to wave away the overpowering smell of fish and sewage mingling at her nostrils, they arrived at the address. Merinda knocked, and a tall, handsome man with bleary eyes and matted hair answered.
“Jonathan!” Benny said.